Helicopter Door Gunners in Vietnam - The Shotgun Riders | US Army Documentary | ca. 1967

SFC William Farrell - The thing was ,flying around in a Huey was inherently dangerous to begin with ,even without the Little People shooting at ya,weather conditions,triple canopy jungle ,in an aircraft with the aerodynamics of a brick,the best part of my rides strange as it seems ,”was when the crew chief or gunner screamed at us to Unass their Bird” and I won’t even mention the batshit crazy 19 year old Wararants flying the choppers!

SGT Philip Roncari - Youre funny Philip but so true. While I've never auto rotated while flying, Ive seen plenty of hard landings as they were practicing in the airfield. Geez, where else can we have 18/19 years olds doing what we were doing! I was 18 in Nam, almost 50 years ago for me now. Nam hasn't killed me yet, hopefully this COVID-19 doesn't either!

SFC William Farrell -Thank you ,great to have someone appreciate my sorry attempts at humor,as you know too well Vietnam was a deadly serious place and I guess my sometimes flippant attitude gets people upset at some of my comments/responses,truth be told ,place scared the sh*t out of me ,very lucky to have survived,I was older than you 21 when I was there in 1966/67,but my old Platoon Sergeant’s voice still rings true “They can kill ya but they can’t eat ya,cause you’re too goddamn tough “,be well Brother.

PO3 Bob McCord- Don’t get me wrong we really appreciated all the rides we got from our aviation people and they worked wonders with resupply and medivacs in outlandishly dangerous conditions,we would sometimes watch in awe as our choppers left the LZ followed by the green tracers of NVA 51 cal ,brave dudes I say!